1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to composites, particularly, to a carbon nanotube composite structure and a method for making the same.
2. Description of Related Art
Carbon nanotubes (CNT) are a novel carbonaceous material having extremely small size and extremely large specific surface area. Carbon nanotubes have interesting and potentially useful electrical and mechanical properties, and have been widely used in a plurality of fields such as emitters, gas storage and separation, chemical sensors, and high strength composites.
However, the main obstacle in applying carbon nanotubes is the difficulty in processing the common powder form of the carbon nanotube products. Therefore, forming separate and tiny carbon nanotubes into manipulable carbon nanotube structures is necessary.
Carbon nanotube composite structure is one kind of manipulable carbon nanotube structures. A method for producing many carbon nanotube composite structures includes a stirring step or vibration step to disperse carbon nanotube powder in the composite matrix. However, carbon nanotubes have extremely high surface energy and are prone to aggregate. Therefore, it is very difficult to achieve a composite with carbon nanotubes evenly dispersed therein. Furthermore, the carbon nanotubes are dispersed in the whole matrix in the carbon nanotube composite structure produced by this method, conductivity of a surface of the carbon nanotube composite structure is low, which limits the application of the carbon nanotube composite structure.
What is needed, therefore, is a carbon nanotube composite structure and method for making the same that can overcome the above-described shortcomings.